The Times view on saving the NHS: Health Warning
It’s time to acknowledge a simple truth: the NHS is not working. Not just today, when 10,000 nurses at 74 hospital trusts were on strike. Nor tomorrow, when they will be joined by ambulance workers on the picket lines. Nor next year, when physiotherapists are threatening to stage a walkout. The reality is that, despite the sincere displays of public appreciation for NHS staff during the pandemic, the NHS itself has not been working for a long time. Indeed, the wave of strikes is being driven not only by demands for higher pay but also by the frustration of NHS staff at the stresses of working in a self-evidently crumbling health system. As Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, noted this week, “the NHS is in an existential crisis … It is failing patients on a daily basis.”
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